


Present

by Energybeing



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:49:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21956926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Energybeing/pseuds/Energybeing
Summary: Nebula. Rocket. Christmas.
Relationships: Nebula & Rocket Raccoon
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Present

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place between Infinity War and End Game. I don't own these characters or Marvel.

“So,” Rocket says hesitantly, “there’s this thing that Quill used to do.”

Nebula doesn’t look up from the blaster she’s making. Her conversations with Rocket either cover small things, like ‘Pass the spanner’ or ‘If you wire the bomb like that you’ll blow up the whole building’, or big things, like grief. It’s never Nebula who talks about the big things. It’s always Rocket. Sometimes he just needs to talk.

In another place, in another time, as another person, Nebula wouldn’t have listened. She hadn’t liked Rocket, had only tolerated him because of his friendship with Gamora. Even now, she doesn’t like him. But he’s the only one on the planet who can understand even a piece of what she feels, and so she clings to him like he’s the only solid thing in a universe cast adrift without an anchor.

He’s the reason that she’s still alive. He’d saved her when she’d woken to an electrical fire, her cybernetic parts finally giving up the ghost. Sometimes she blames him for that, but even so, she can’t begrudge him the desire to talk. 

“He had this thing. A little booklet thing, made of paper, if you can believe it. It was called a ‘calendar’.” Rocket pronounces the last word as though it’s unfamiliar to him. “He used to keep track of the date. Every day he’d check a box, and on certain days things would happen.”

Nebula’s familiar with the concept. It’s common amongst people who don’t spend much time in space. She’d never really seen the point of keeping track of the date. To her, every day is pretty much the same as any other. Even now, with the entire universe divided into Before and After, every day is the same. Time drags on, agonisingly, moment by moment. Each second takes an eternity to die.

Still, she says nothing. She knows that Rocket doesn’t want her to talk. 

“One of the days is this thing called ‘Christmas’. Quill sa-“ Rocket breaks off with a sharp breath. In the few seconds before he speaks again, Nebula doesn’t look at him. She gives no indication that anything is wrong. When Rocket continues, his voice is steady. He too pretends that nothing is wrong. “He used to say that it was a day to give presents and eat until you’re sick and spend time with, uh, this enormous bird thing. A tourniquet, I think.”

Nebula knows that he hadn’t planned to talk about giant birds, and that the word which had turned to dust on his tongue had been ‘family’. The pain cuts through her like a razor wire. Nevertheless, there’s no sign of it when she speaks. She’s used to hiding pain. “I haven’t gotten you anything.”

“I didn’t think you had, you heartless robot.” There’s no sting to Rocket’s words. “Anyway, the thing is, it’s tomorrow. Christmas. Some people are meeting in a bar. There will be food. _Booze_. Thor’ll be there. Rogers. Some others.”

Nebula shoots a glance at Rocket. She isn’t sure what he’s getting at. She’s heard Rocket stumble back to his cot late at night reeking of alcohol almost every night since It happened. She doubts that he’s asking her opinion about switching to day drinking.

Rocket doesn’t look at her. “D’you wanna come?”

The answer is on her tongue before she even has time to think, but it dies unsaid before it can get further than that. She rarely leaves this workroom. She’s an alien on this world, and she can’t go anywhere without being reminded that she doesn’t belong here. She makes people uncomfortable. She always has. But still, she doesn’t say no.

The silence stretches on for a few seconds, before Rocket rushes to fill it. “’Cause, uh, the thing is, the _thing_ is that Thor is leaving. New Asgard is practically off the ground, now. I mean, it isn’t, ‘cause it isn’t a floating city, you know, but… yeah. He’s leaving.”

Ah. Thor is everything that Nebula is not. He is warm, kind, open. He can even get drunk. Most importantly, though, he’s the only one besides her that knew the Guardians in any meaningful way. 

It shouldn’t surprise her that Rocket’s choosing him over her. Rocket’s never made it a secret that he doesn’t like her. She just happens to be the only thing that he has left. It shouldn’t surprise her, but it does. There’s a tightness in her chest that has nothing to do with cybernetics.

She nods once, briskly. She knows that, the moment Rocket leaves, she’ll find her way off-world. She’ll find some planet where people know who is and what she’s done, and then that’ll be the end of it.

For his part, Rocket looks wretched. His head lolls forward as though he can’t support its weight, and his ears droop unhappily. 

~*~

Nebula hangs uncertainly by the door, a bottle of beer in her hand. Thanos removed her liver long ago and replaced it with something far more efficient, so she feels no drive to join in what Thor loudly proclaims to be ‘carousing’. Drunk people hold no interest for her.

Her eyes linger on Rocket, who is bright, sparkling, and very, very drunk. As a result, she almost doesn’t notice someone coming to stand beside her. Almost. She’s survived too much to miss something like that.

“Hey.”

Nebula doesn’t turn her head. She recognises the voice as belonging to Romanoff. There had been a time, After, when people had tried speaking to her. Being spiky, cold, and in pain, she’d driven them away. Romanoff had been one of them. She’d asked Nebula what she’d planned to do, now that Thanos was dead. She hadn’t answered.

If she’s being honest, she hadn’t known _how_ to answer. Her life had revolved around Thanos. Both when she’d worked for him, and when she’d worked against him. It still does, even now. Yes, Thanos was dead – she’d seen Thor take the head from his shoulders – but he’s still in her head, every moment of every day. She knows, deep in the bones that he’d broken and replaced over and over and over again, that he always will be. She often wakes in the night, certain that the world will dissolve into a red swirl and there he’ll be, Reality Stone in his hand, gloating. In her dreams, she hovers strung out in the air, disassembled and in exquisite agony. He is always there.

If Romanoff takes her silence personally, she doesn’t show it. “What’ll you do now?” The human asks, nodding at Rocket as he tilts his head back and pours something down his throat as Thor cheers him on. “I know Danvers is off-world, helping the rest of the universe.” Romanoff shakes her head, realising the enormity of what she just said. “You gonna join her?”

Nebula barely knows the one they call Captain Marvel, but she knows that woman knows her. She knows what she is. She shakes her head, the first acknowledgment she’s made to anything that Romanoff has said. “No.”

“You could stay here, you know,” Romanoff says gently. Though her voice is kind, there’s no pity in it. Nebula is pathetically grateful for that, and for a moment she _hates_ Romanoff for it – but then she realises that the only person she really hates is herself, and the moment passes. “We could use someone with your skills.”

The words set Nebula’s teeth on edge. She’s been used too often. It’s all she’s ever been. “I’m sure you can,” she replies tightly, the dismissal clear in her voice.

Romanoff shrugs, as though she doesn’t care. Maybe she doesn’t – Nebula can’t see why she would. “Fine, then. Just crawl away and die.”

Nebula spins to face her, an aggressive motion which doesn’t fit in with the jovial air of the bar. People turn to look at her, faces hard. They’ve come to get away from the constant battle that is After. She doesn’t care. “ _What did you say?_ ”

Romanoff looks back at her coolly, entirely unrepentant. “The racoon’s all you’ve got left, and he’s leaving you. Only a matter of time before you find yourself a little scrap somewhere and try and get yourself killed.”

Nebula’s about to snap that she knows _nothing_ about her, but she sees something in the other woman’s face that makes her pause. She knows in that moment, without having to ask, that Romanoff knows _exactly_ how she feels. She’s been there before.

For the first time in her life, the fight goes out of her. “Probably.”

Romanoff’s lips quirk into something that would probably be a smile, if it wasn’t quite so tired. “Budapest’s always been good to me for that sort of thing. Though I didn’t have the option of going to a different planet.”

“Why?” Nebula asked, to her own surprise. She hadn’t intended to speak. She wasn’t even fully sure what she was asking.

Romanoff seems to understand anyway. She’s uncomfortably perceptive, Nebula thinks. “Why am I still here? I had a friend. He offered me a job. Gave me a purpose. The opportunity of a lifetime.” Her smile widens, becoming both genuine and sad. “Of having a lifetime, he said.” The smile gradually fades, although the sadness remains.

Nebula doesn’t need to ask what happened to her friend. The sadness emanating from Romanoff is enough of an answer for her. “I’m told,” she says slowly, “that today is a day when friends give gifts.” Romanoff seems confused for a moment, though she hides it quickly. “Thank you for your present.” She looks down and away. “For giving me a present, that is.”

Romanoff’s answering smile is bright, and Nebula wonders what she’s let herself in for. She meets Rocket’s gaze for a moment. He raises a glass to her. She nods, and turns to leave.

~*~

Rocket stumbles back into their room early in the morning. Nebula is curled up on the floor – unused to luxury, she’s never felt comfortable in a bed. Being between sheets is too much like being trapped.

She hadn’t thought that she’d see Rocket again. Even so, she pretends to be asleep.

She hears Rocket stand stock still in the middle of the floor for about a minute. She wonders if he believes that she’s asleep. She wonders if it matters. Eventually, he clambers into his cot.

Several minutes later, when Nebula had thought that he’d slipped into a drunken slumber, Rocket speaks. “Neb?”

She doesn’t say, as she has so many times before, that she hates that nickname. “Yes?”

“See you at work.”

Nebula smiles and, for the first time since she was a child – for the first time since Thanos – the smile is entirely genuine. “Night, Rocket.” 

“Chirpy Christmas.”


End file.
